Considering QWET - School me!

Ok, so I have seen loads of you guys getting great concentrates using ethanol as opposed to ISO. I feel I have gotten as much from QWISO as I will be able to get and BHO is completely out of the question, I live in a place with no outdoor area. I am not purging butane indoors because I don't like combusting myself (pun intended).

Can somebody who makes great amber coloured wax/shatter with ethanol walk me through their process? I am looking for high yields (compared to the material put in) and high potency, taste is utterly secondary (but welcome!), I have pretty poor senses of both smell and taste anyway. I typically use my light brown E-Nano AVB but am not completely averse to using fresh/cured buds, but would like to know what kinds of yields to expect. I prefer the uplifting feeling of concentrates and don't care if I don't do flowers at all lol.

Also, crucially, any Australians who know where one can get high enough percentage/proof ethanol at a non-exorbitant price? Spyrytus @ 95.7% in 500ml for $70 is completely whacky!

Also, finally, is there a cheap, safe way that one may collect evaporated alcohol and cool it into liquid again for future runs? I noticed skunkpharm managed this but it didn't seem all that clear how. Yes I have read the skunkpharm article, but I'd love to hear some stories from people I actually engage with online on a day to day basis, with any photos/videos anyone would be happy to provide showing me the kind of bud/avb input vs concentrate output.

Cheers in advance you knowledgeable tokers!

Also, fellow science people, anyone ever used a rotovap for this purpose? Seems like it could be a godsend for these kinds of tasks, especially distilling the evaporated ethanol back down for future use!

I'm familiar with the skunk pharm qwet technique as well. The purging method they detail uses high heat and decarboxylates the oil. Works well for edibles/candies but I'm interested in the purging methods you guys use to get a stable, dabbable final product. Also curious about the taste compared to well made/purged bho.

Also do you guys running qwet do second (third?) washes on the same material. If so do you dry the herb out and refreeze between washes or do you do them one right after the other? What kind of yields are you seeing with each wash?

It seems to me that qwet is the best alternative for people who don't have a good outdoor spot to run butane and would love to see some helpful info in this thread.

I love QWET...it has allowed me to finally enjoy some high end concentrates.

I freeze everything and do a 3 minute wash with minor agitation. I let it just sit and evap for 12-24 hours and it's good to go. I place the dish on top of my stereo receiver which puts off just enough heat to push the evap along without decarbing the oil.

Been doing this for months now and consistently am getting around 10% yield per run. I always run the same material twice and I dry it between runs. When I didn't dry it I got a LOT more chlorophyll.

Sweet! About to grab myself an Ophos pen and can't wait to try out what I learn in this thread on it! Looking forward to having something truly portable again, since giving up on my PNP, vaping on the go has been a no go!

Sweet! About to grab myself an Ophos pen and can't wait to try out what I learn in this thread on it! Looking forward to having something truly portable again, since giving up on my PNP, vaping on the go has been a no go!

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I humbly suggest the omicron lite over the ophos. If for anything the slightly smaller profile and updated electronics.

Ok, so I have seen loads of you guys getting great concentrates using ethanol as opposed to ISO. I feel I have gotten as much from QWISO as I will be able to get and BHO is completely out of the question, I live in a place with no outdoor area. I am not purging butane indoors because I don't like combusting myself (pun intended).

Can somebody who makes great amber coloured wax/shatter with ethanol walk me through their process? I am looking for high yields (compared to the material put in) and high potency, taste is utterly secondary (but welcome!), I have pretty poor senses of both smell and taste anyway. I typically use my light brown E-Nano AVB but am not completely averse to using fresh/cured buds, but would like to know what kinds of yields to expect. I prefer the uplifting feeling of concentrates and don't care if I don't do flowers at all lol.

Also, crucially, any Australians who know where one can get high enough percentage/proof ethanol at a non-exorbitant price? Spyrytus @ 95.7% in 500ml for $70 is completely whacky!

Also, finally, is there a cheap, safe way that one may collect evaporated alcohol and cool it into liquid again for future runs? I noticed skunkpharm managed this but it didn't seem all that clear how. Yes I have read the skunkpharm article, but I'd love to hear some stories from people I actually engage with online on a day to day basis, with any photos/videos anyone would be happy to provide showing me the kind of bud/avb input vs concentrate output.

Cheers in advance you knowledgeable tokers!

Also, fellow science people, anyone ever used a rotovap for this purpose? Seems like it could be a godsend for these kinds of tasks, especially distilling the evaporated ethanol back down for future use!

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when doing nug runs with quality starting material you should expect about a 15-20% return. my process is a 3min frozen wash just like described in the SP article except i filter and evap differently. i have stopped using paper coffee filters and now use 50, 25, and 10 micron SS mesh for filtration. my runs are almost always a .25 at a time so i use as little Everclear as possible. this keeps evap time down.

so with everything frozen (flowers in a jar and bottle of EC) i pour until the liquid level is about a 1/4" above the flowers (maybe less). after a gentle shake it quickly goes back into the freezer for a min. after each minute i give it another gentle swirl/shake. after the 3 mins it gets a swirl and then gets dumped into a SS funnel with a standard SS mesh screen for quick separation of flowers and liquid. then the liquid gets filtered through each dif micron screen (50, 25, and 10) with the 10 micron being the last and filters directly into the evap dish. the evap dish is heated (i keep it around 100deg) and has a fan blowing over it aggressively. a pretty standard SS screen covers the dish during evap to keep any foreign matter from getting in. because of the small runs i do the ethanol evaps pretty quick... usually within an hour or two. at this point it is hard and sticky as hell. then i scrape it out, into a pile, and warm it gently to form a single piece. i warm it by placing a small slick pad on a hot plate. after it warms for 10-20 mins i throw another small slick pad on top of the oil and throw the "slick pad/oil/slick pad" sandwich in the freezer for a min or so. from there its dabbalicious.

i dont know much about reclaiming the Everclear. its distilled a couple miles away from me so its readily available. i usually get 6-10 runs out of a bottle. its funny because what im doing with it is a no-no yet drinking the Everclear itself is perfectly legal...

I'm familiar with the skunk pharm qwet technique as well. The purging method they detail uses high heat and decarboxylates the oil. Works well for edibles/candies but I'm interested in the purging methods you guys use to get a stable, dabbable final product. Also curious about the taste compared to well made/purged bho.

Also do you guys running qwet do second (third?) washes on the same material. If so do you dry the herb out and refreeze between washes or do you do them one right after the other? What kind of yields are you seeing with each wash?

It seems to me that qwet is the best alternative for people who don't have a good outdoor spot to run butane and would love to see some helpful info in this thread.

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yes i do second washes. it gets a 5 min wash and is done directly after the first. it results in a decent amber oil that will likely be cloudy, but still transparent to a degree. it still tastes pretty good and is damn potent. i also do third runs, but i let it dry out and collect a bunch from other fresh runs. then i do the third runs together. its a 10 min wash that results in a dark "tar" like oil that doesnt taste that great really, but its also mighty potent. i usually do a flower and tar sandwich in a flower vape with this stuff. puts me to bed. about to go do that right now actually! all of these results with 2nd and 3rd washes will vary with the dif flower strains being used. some strains have more of the goods than others.

when doing nug runs with quality starting material you should expect about a 15-20% return. my process is a 3min frozen wash just like described in the SP article except i filter and evap differently. i have stopped using paper coffee filters and now use 50, 25, and 10 micron SS mesh for filtration. my runs are almost always a .25 at a time so i use as little Everclear as possible. this keeps evap time down.

so with everything frozen (flowers in a jar and bottle of EC) i pour until the liquid level is about a 1/4" above the flowers (maybe less). after a gentle shake it quickly goes back into the freezer for a min. after each minute i give it another gentle swirl/shake. after the 3 mins it gets a swirl and then gets dumped into a SS funnel with a standard SS mesh screen for quick separation of flowers and liquid. then the liquid gets filtered through each dif micron screen (50, 25, and 10) with the 10 micron being the last and filters directly into the evap dish. the evap dish is heated (i keep it around 100deg) and has a fan blowing over it aggressively. a pretty standard SS screen covers the dish during evap to keep any foreign matter from getting in. because of the small runs i do the ethanol evaps pretty quick... usually within an hour or two. at this point it is hard and sticky as hell. then i scrape it out, into a pile, and warm it gently to form a single piece. i warm it by placing a small slick pad on a hot plate. after it warms for 10-20 mins i throw another small slick pad on top of the oil and throw the "slick pad/oil/slick pad" sandwich in the freezer for a min or so. from there its dabbalicious.

i dont know much about reclaiming the Everclear. its distilled a couple miles away from me so its readily available. i usually get 6-10 runs out of a bottle. its funny because what im doing with it is a no-no yet drinking the Everclear itself is perfectly legal...

yes i do second washes. it gets a 5 min wash and is done directly after the first. it results in a decent amber oil that will likely be cloudy, but still transparent to a degree. it still tastes pretty good and is damn potent. i also do third runs, but i let it dry out and collect a bunch from other fresh runs. then i do the third runs together. its a 10 min wash that results in a dark "tar" like oil that doesnt taste that great really, but its also mighty potent. i usually do a flower and tar sandwich in a flower vape with this stuff. puts me to bed. about to go do that right now actually! all of these results with 2nd and 3rd washes will vary with the dif flower strains being used. some strains have more of the goods than others.

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SS really is golden for all things concentrates isn't it! Any suggestions of good sources to purchase this from? I can't do QWET if the ethanol is not recondensed into liquid after. It is just not financially justifiable here. It costs $70 for 500ml of 95.7% spyrytus stuff (everclear doesn't seem to get sold here).

This process sounds almost identical to how I do my QWISO runs though, so I really hope I can rig myself up a condensing system

Cheers for this info too, this is exactly the stuff I need

Please do feel free to provide pics of the results if you are so inclined

SS really is golden for all things concentrates isn't it! Any suggestions of good sources to purchase this from? I can't do QWET if the ethanol is not recondensed into liquid after. It is just not financially justifiable here. It costs $70 for 500ml of 95.7% spyrytus stuff (everclear doesn't seem to get sold here).

This process sounds almost identical to how I do my QWISO runs though, so I really hope I can rig myself up a condensing system

Cheers for this info too, this is exactly the stuff I need

Please do feel free to provide pics of the results if you are so inclined

Oh good. 2clicker beat me. I know he does it all perfectly I do the exact same thing as you, but instead I don't deal with scraping. I pour it right on to a slick mat lined pyrex dish for the purging. Slick mats are 100% safe with ethanol. Its butane that they react to. I've used it every time, I don't even own razor blades

Yes I prefer my QWET to my BHO. I love both, BHO is easier to get better flavor, but the QWET is guaranteed safety on inhalations... You can drink alcohol straight, you can even vaporize alcohol with a machine these days. Worst case there is some ethanol in the PPM left, and you dab like 1/1000000th of a shot of booze. Butane is nontoxic, but there is other shit like pentane and stuff we are still learning about. I will and still do dab BHO that I buy, but when QWET is around I prefer it. My QWET is better than 99% of the BHO I can get in the area, so I prefer to make my own, but it is expensive on the east coast!

When dispensaries open here if they have co2 oil I'll buy that and make my own QWET. Then I won't really have a need for BHO other than special occasions for variety or something.

QWET FTW when done right. I posted in the dab thread my stable shatter QWET. I'm yet to get anything other than shatter in fact. Last time I got something other than shatter from alcohol extraction was 91% QWISO extractions, but with a longer soak onto a dinner plate like 14 years ago...

Now if you plan on using ABV, expect a dark sludge. ABV can't shatter, its already been decarbed. I do make QWET with my abv, I have 3 grams of "QWETBV" right now, but its too shitty to dab IMO. Would be good on top of buds in a flower vape like 2clicker said. I want to make a pain balm, but the easy part of making the "QWETBV" is done, and now I really don't want to bother with the rest of the process.

Oh good. 2clicker beat me. I know he does it all perfectly I do the exact same thing as you, but instead I don't deal with scraping. I pour it right on to a slick mat lined pyrex dish for the purging. Slick mats are 100% safe with ethanol. Its butane that they react to. I've used it every time, I don't even own razor blades

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well i have read that ethanol will/can discolor silicone. plus i emailed all of the slick stuff makers and ALL of them said they do not recommend evapping ethanol out of their products.

im just not sure 100% compatible. the slick sheet on the other hand is (its pure teflon) but i find it harder to collect from it than scraping.

I'd take a slickmat and try it. Let it soak in the stuff. Mine haven't changed at all.

I thought the original ones were not safe for alcohol, but they redesigned them supposedly and now they are safe for ethanol. Did you ask them a long time ago?

FWIW mine are oil slick brand. I don't think I'll stop using them since I look at them carefully before and after each run, and not a thing has changed.

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no i asked after the new ones came out. its probably fine and the MFGs are just covering their ass. although they did say they dont recommend using a slick pad with ethanol, but do recommend using the slick sheet with ethanol. so i dont know.

Anyone have any advice or suggestions for purging/evaporating? I don't really have a good spot to let it sit with a fan in the dark undisturbed and safe.

I thought I read on another thread that didn't recommend purging with heat and water baths because you can lose flavor. Is that true?

I'm about to take my first go at a QWET extraction tomorrow. Letting my EC and buds sit in the freezer over night while I wait.

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you can still use heat w/out losing much if anything, but it has to be low.

you can just air evap QWET, but a fan will greatly speed it up. which is good because exposure to air will degrade oil. same with heat, but if done quickly its a non issue.

i was dabbling with a heatless evap, but after evap i still had to heat it to get it to a shatter state. w/out heat it stayed almost in a liquid state (more like honey). that mind of oil is near impossible to handle w/out losing some.

my advice would be to use heat, but keep it around 100deg and for as little time as possible to get a stable product. also, use a fan to blow over your dish when evapping. you can wait for it to air evap, but who wants to wait that long?

heat, air, and light will all degrade your oil. use of heat and air are ok, but keep the exposure to a minimum. keep light away from your oil/herb as much as possible.

I might have a chance to run a 1/4 of blue dream today. I've always only done single wash, but I'll try 2 washes on this batch. I want to get my $$$ worth here. Shit is expensive, but the quality of the product I end up with is better than the BHO around here, and better still....its 100% safe as is. No loud vac needed (though I'd still love one some day).